Ralston Reports: Team Clinton growing nervous about Nevada

The Hillary Clinton juggernaut arrived in Nevada last spring, making all the right moves. She hired Emmy Ruiz, a skilled operative who worked for Clinton and Barack Obama here in 2008 (Clinton won the popular vote but lost the delegate fight), to helm her effort. Ruiz brought a Nevada-centric team together, people who knew the state and its burgeoning Latino community, which made up 15 percent of the caucus universe eight years ago. And in May, Clinton held a memorable event, a roundtable with DREAMers, who just recently endorsed her for the nomination.

Nevada was Clinton Country, mostly because of her organizational strength designed to construct a firewall should Bernie Sanders do well in New Hampshire. Indeed, Sanders apparently couldn’t place Nevada on a map – he had no offices, no staff, no footprint at all.

Now, one week before Nevada Democrats break the tie between Iowa and New Hampshire and decide if the Sanders Surge is real, yesterday has vanished and Hillary Clinton can’t stop thinking about tomorrow.

No, not the way the Clintons meant it in 1992, with optimism and hope. This campaign is filled with dread and fear; you can feel it.

In a poker game, they are what is known as “tells,” some giveaway to what cards a player holds, some sign of whether he has the flush or has a busted hand. As Team Clinton focuses on the state where gambling dominates, their tells are showing.

After spending so much time touting the minority outreach, especially to Latinos, Team Clinton is now repeating the ridiculous and false mantra that Nevada is not so different than Iowa and New Hampshire, two of the whitest states in the union. It’s as if history doesn’t exist.

You know, the history where a guy named Harry Reid went to the Democratic National Committee in 2007 and persuaded key players that Nevada was not just the gateway to the West but to a more diverse place that reflected America’s changing demographics.

Ralston Reports: Clinton-Hispanic relationship a necessity

That’s why Reid has been so obviously offended by the Clinton canard, a fairy tale if you will, spun by a campaign that gave away its panic as the New Hampshire results became clear. From the top (campaign manager Robby Mook) on down (spokesman Brian Fallon) they pushed the false narrative that Nevada had an 80 percent white voter population. This is so far from true, and they know it (especially Mook, who – wait for it – ran Hillary’s campaign here in 2008).

They know that electorate was at least 30 percent minority, and they know it is projected to be closer to 40 percent this cycle. Nevada’s Hispanic population is about 27 percent, and it is barely a majority white state anymore – not, as Reid so memorably and wryly put it last week, like his 1976 yearbook.

So the story we are asked to buy is that Sanders will do well here because the demographics are so similar. Why does Hillary Clinton not like white people? Or why don’t white people like Hillary Clinton?

There has been no reliable or recent polling in Nevada and not much of it, so it’s not surprising that a survey released last week that showed the race a dead heat garnered so much attention. Yes, the outlet that paid for it, The Washington Free Beacon, would love to see Clinton lose and asked a series of nasty questions about her to see how people felt. (Think emails.)

But all of that stuff was asked after the initial horse race question, and even if the poll were somehow skewed, I’d guess the Sanders Surge is real, if only from the Clinton tells. Just last month, the Clinton campaign was touting a 25-point lead in Nevada.

You don’t need to be a pundit to discern this is not the behavior of a campaign with an insurmountable lead.

Considering the institutional advantages and her first-rate team, Clinton should still be considered the favorite. Caucus turnout will be relatively low – in 2008, the record 120,000 voters was still only about a quarter of the Democratic electorate – so organization matters. And a lot could and will happen in the next week, including a nationally televised town hall on Thursday in Las Vegas.

The Sanders folks are not nearly as sophisticated as the Clinton team, sneaking around in casinos to try to infiltrate the casino worker cohort and touting Spanish newspaper endorsements from outlets no one has heard of or reads. But the enthusiasm is as real here as it is anywhere, judging from his rallies and from what I hear from folks in the field. And momentum in politics is very difficult to blunt, much less turn around.

You know that the Clintons will do everything they can in this last week to tilt the scales into their favor, including, I’d guess, trying to get the Culinary union to endorse. The union has stayed out of the fray so far, but I don’t know how long that can last. I’d guess some phone calls are coming into union HQ with 202 area codes.

Clinton was so remarkably facile, so seemingly empathetic with those DREAMers last May, so eager to get to the left of Obama on immigration (“I’ll take your executive order and raise you three more.”)

Yes, that seems like yesterday. But now, after Feb. 20, Team Clinton has to be worried there may be no tomorrow.

Jon Ralston has been covering Nevada politics for more than a quarter-century. He is the host of "Ralston Live" on KNPB Channel 5, shown weeknights at 5:30 p.m., and also blogs at ralstonreports.com.